Wednesday, July 14, 2010

It's the coolest! You ain't cool unless you pee your pants!

The Quevedo at the Buffet is cool again! Well, I think it should be anyways. Since the arrival of our latest baby, the "Anonymous Eagle" (found at http://www.anonymouseagle.com/), I feel that we have completely neglected the "QB". So much so, that until the most recent giant burger post, it has been a month since the last meeting of the minds. That being said, I am going to make an effort to revive this S.O.B.! Some don't think that it can be done. They say I'm too old and simply can't hack it anymore. They say I don't have perfect hair and am not wacky and upbeat enough to initiate such a renaissance. Well, you know what I think? I think I'd like to hang around and see if we can give 'em all a nice big shitburger to eat! So without further ado, here is my first attempt at a viagara-like remedy for everyone's favorite blog, the "Quevedo at the Buffet":

Here we are in the dog days of summer. It's July 19th and the Brewers are lulling us to sleep with their 9 game's under 0.500 record. Marquette basketball is all but dormant, with the only excitement coming from a glorified game of pick up in the Milwaukee Pro Am at Homestead High School. The Packers will be beginning training camp in the next couple of weeks, but since Brett Favre left, we don't have to sit around and discuss whether or not his appearance at the local Mississippi high school football practice means he's coming back this season. And, the Bucks......well, I know, it's the NBA. All that said, it is a VERY tough time to get a heated debate going. In spite of this, I'm going to grab the bull by the horns and use a recent road trip discussion that I had with some of our constituents.

As I previously stated, the Brewers aren't doing so hot. Not only are they not doing hot, they're kind of in a bad position from a "building for the future" perspective.....ie. they're wasting another year of Prince Fielder's bat. The Brewers have Prince locked up through the 2011 season, but then have to deal with everyone's favorite agent, Scott Boras. Attanasio and Co. have tried to avoid this scenario by locking him up early, ala Ryan Braun, but Boras doesn't work that way. He knows the best way to get paid is to let people fight over you, and word on the street is that he will be looking for a Mark Texeira-like deal that will have Prince earn about 20-25 mil for 5-7 years. Yeah, something tells me that's not in Attanasio's budget. And I'm not the only one to realize this. Prince was briefly discussed throughout the baseball rumor mill leading up to last year's trade deadline. The guy was tearing the cover off the ball and averaging roughly 43 HR's and 120 RBI's between the '07-'09 seasons. In my opinion, his trade value wasn't going to get any higher. Who knows if anyone offered, or who was offered for that matter, but in the end it was all smoke as Prince is still in Milwaukee. Here we are a year later, and sure enough, Prince seems to be a hot topic on Buster Olney's list of trade prospects. According to Buster, the two most probable suitors are the Chicago White Sox and Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays option actually made a bit of sense as Olney pointed out that Tampa Bay has desirable pitching prospects in the waiting and only have one year remaining on Carl Crawford's deal meaning they may push all in for a run.

I for one am completely for dealing him. I think he should have been dealt last season, but I understood the fact that Milwaukee still had an outside shot at making a playoff run this season with the current roster and SP addition. Now that that's out the window, I simply think that we are running out of time and need to heavily consider dealing him asap. I'd hate to still have him 1 year from now and let teams lowball us in trade offers knowing that all we might see is a compensatory pick if we lose him. One of the big chips that we still have in our pockets with him is that he still does have 1 "cheap" year remaining on his current deal. Not to mention the remaining 2 months for any playoff contending team. Now I don't have any clue as to who is on the market and I've lost reception to the wire tap that I had to Melvin's cell phone, so I don't know who's calling with what. Further, I don't know a damn about Triple/DoubleA ball, so I don't really know who the hot prospects are. All I know is that I want pitching. Pitching, Pitching, Pitching, and more pitching. Now I know many of you will say that 1) everybody wants pitching which makes it very $$$$$ or 2) if teams have pitching, they simply hold onto it. I'll partially agree with you, but refer you to some recent deals such as Josh Hamilton for Edison Volques and the most recent Justin Smoak and a case of blatz for Cliff Lee deal. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't mind having Gallardo and Lee/Volquez pitching 2 out of every 5 games.

The trade deadline will be here in no time meaning this team could look very different come August. Okay, go ahead and rip away.

(2) Given his shit-tastic performance in the J.J. Hardy - Carlos Gomez swap, I have less-than-zero faith in Doug Melvin to successfully pull off a trade involving Prince. He'll probably ask for a starting pitcher, be told no, ask for a closer, be told no, and then settle on a 23-year-old middle reliever and a prospect at A ball.

In regards to #2, I thought that I was the only 1 that had been doubting Melvin. IMO, he has been living off of 2 deals during his tenure....

1. Trading Richie Sexson for 5 players. Everyone made such a big deal that we received 5 big league starting players for 1.....in spite of the fact that all were at best mediocre. Looking back it wasn't all that great of a deal and we may have been better off taking the compensatory draft pick for losing him to free agency.

And

2. Trading for Sabathia which was the move that put this team in the playoffs after decades of missing out.

I think it's time that we take a little less heat off of our coaches and put some on Melvin who puts together this craptastical pitching staff year in and year out. That being said, I too am worried what we get in return.

Rub's - so you're saying Melvin is an untouchable at this point? In spite of my criticism of Melvin, I will say that he's done a pretty solid job with his 1st and 2nd round draft picks the last decade....pitching aside of course.

Melvin's had a good amateur scouting department when it comes to hitters, I agree. As far as evaluating young pitchers, we're awful. Go read KL's post on BCB today; he went to the T-rats game to watch Eric Arnett pitch, and dude was barely touching 92 on the gun.

I'm not arguing that Melvin SHOULD BE untouchable. I'm just sayin': Mark A's comments seem to indicate that he's not going anywhere.

That's the question at hand....has it been the success of his scouting heads or his ultimate decisions. Word on the street was Jack Zduriencik was the brains behind the operation which ultimately lead to him landing the GM job in Seattle. The problem is, prospects take so long to make it to the bigs that it will be years before we realize how good Jack was or how Melvin will do without him.

PS. Is anyone else having issues with the visual verification password?

The White Sox don't have a ton to offer. But what they do have interests me. Gordon Beckham and Daniel Hudson, plus whatever else gets tossed in would make an interesting package. If only Jake Peavy hadn't gotten hurt. If Chicago still had him they might be more eager to pull the trigger on a deal.

I think there should be one qualifier to any deal Milwaukee makes this year - Carlos Gomez must be included in any deal.

Lorenzo Cain is the center fielder of the future. He's in the show now, riding the pine. If he's going to be up here, he might as well play.

As for Escobar, he can play. He's been a little inconsistent defensively which is a bit of a disappointment. He makes great contact at the plate. Unfortunately, he often makes contact when he swings at bad pitches, and gets himself out. I don't worry about him. He'll be fine.

I'm going to semi-respectfully disagree with Reid's assessment of Escobar. Esky has been a major disappointment. His defense hasn't lived up to its advance billing, his OBP is right at .300, and his OPS is a Kendallian .632. And he's only got 8 steals in 12 chances.

In sum: he hasn't exactly shown that the decision to give up on J.J. Hardy after one down season with the stick was an inspired move.